New Report: Hurricanes Added to Red Tide

A new study by USF's Institute for Marine Remote Sensing says all that rain from the flurry of hurricanes that passed our shores in two thousand four and five had a delayed effect. Much of the rain soaked into the underground aquifer - and as much as a year later - surfaced miles offshore in underwater springs. And those springs carried nutrients such as agriculture runoff and fertilizer that has been blamed for organism that creates red tide.

Chaunmin Hu is executive director of the institute.

HU: If we extend this concept to the offshore bloom, the hurricane of 2004 may have induced a bloom in 2005.

Doctor Hoo says with more hurricanes likely on the way, there's not much that can be done to stem the tide of future epsiodes of the waterborne toxin. The study was published in this month's edition of Geophysical Research Letters.